


General Ghost

by Aithilin



Series: Halloween Week 2019 [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Campfire, Canon Compliant, Gen, Glaive family, Implied Nyx Ulric/Noctis Lucis Caelum, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: There are nights where all they can do is tell stories around the fire.





	General Ghost

He had no idea why they did it. Why they spent their few hours of peace on the front lines of the siege telling ghost stories around a campfire in the pre-dusk light. Why, as the floodlights flickered to life around the camp— the settlement, the tiny dugout they had named their home for the month— they chose to share their collective knowledge of urban legends and ghost story variations rather than happier memories of homes far away from the war. The generators hummed in the mud around them this time, the shadow of the ruined and razed town that once bordered Cavaugh stretching it around them, shielding them. 

Nothing quite drowned out the sounds of night beyond the secluded little camp they had built. 

Daemons clawed their way out from the earth, rising in clouds of black miasma, spewing their black ichor across the mud beneath them. Sharp weapons, claws, fangs, wet wings stretching as the emerged from their sleep emerged with them. With the spindles, and twisted bodies, with the ghostly forms of apparitions emerging first from the shadows, and then from the darkening world itself. The came with groans and growls and the sickly sounds of splaying mud. 

The generators could never quite mask the sounds. 

Beyond that, across the divide gouged out by an ancient war between the gods, the Niflheim army glowed red against the night sky. Their artificial wards flickered across the ground, seen in the distance like a ghostly sea of wavering red, complemented by the fiery flares of their airships and bases and the foothold they had gained across the gorge. 

And then, deep within the canyon itself, like the broken bones and wounded shell that it was, the red pulse of ancient Solheim ruins glowed. They rose on either side of the deep crevice, like the bones of skeletal remains that were impossible to bleach in the sun; the remnants barely seen from the dusty lip high above, but the blood of the ancient civilization buried beneath the Astrals’ wrath pulsing from a hidden beating heart in the night. As daemons clawed their way to life. 

Nyx wished they had better stories to tell. 

Better things to think about as they sat around the campfire, watching the embers lifted on the breeze around them. He wished he could tell them about the bonfire with Noctis out on a beach by the Straight that passed between the Allural Deep and Lucinia Sound. When the summer breeze had caught their embers and carried them far over the calm waters, just outside of the fortifications of Insomnia. When the stories shared were all the memories of his sister, of Galahd, of his family back home. 

He wished he could remember those stories now, too. 

But the sounds of daemons and the flaring red of the enemy had a way of driving the peace from even the most resilient Glaive’s mind. 

And Nyx was not the most resilient of the Glaives gathered around the campfire. 

“Why are we even talking about this?” Pelna asked, picking at the rations— pouches of precooked meals selected from pre-managed menus, selected before they had even thought of dark and long nights they would be spent by the campfire. “Ghost stories? Really?”

“What else would you suggest?” Crowe had skipped the main course— the meat ripped from its vacuum sealed package and skewered for reheating over the fire, joining Nyx and Libertus’ portions— and bit off a chunk of the candy bar meant for dessert. Her eyes were trained on the shadows beyond their circle of light and warmth against the night. “You don’t even know any good ones.”

Drautos, usually the quietest among them, leaned forward on his seat, arms folded as he watched the fire with the rest of them; “I’ll go first then?”

Nyx smiled, turning the pre-cooked meat, dripping the remnants of its thick gravy into the fire. “A Captain story? That’s always a treat.”

“I can’t tell if you’re serious, Ulric.”

“Best not ask those sorts of questions, Sir.”

“I won’t make it a habit,” Drautos agreed, looking smaller than Nyx thought possible in the flickering firelight. He had slouched forward, the imposing, fatherly bulk of him curled inward toward the warmth while the shadows danced across his features. The Captain had insisted on joining them when they made camp, when they set out to the ruins like this. He insisted on being there, to ensure no Glaive was left behind when it could be avoided. “But I do have a story. Take how you want, it’s a piece of Nif intelligence that was waiting until we got back.”

“And you think it’s a ghost story, Sir?” The scoff was almost audible in Libertus’ voice. 

Drautos’ wry smile was almost lost in the light; “Something like that. You all know of General Glauca?”

A round of wary nods, furtive glances to the red glow of the Imperials across the chasm, barely visible save for the shadows moving through the flickering sea of red light or passing before the glow of the airships. Nyx was not interested in committing the shapes of Nifs or daemons to memory. But he knew the lines of dormant MTs better than most. He knew the shape of officers passing before the flares, eyes alert for victims they could claim. 

“Word is,” Drautos continued; “Glauca was a man once. A man of Cavaugh if the story is true.”

“Is it?” Pelna asked, his interruption causing all eyes to turn to him. “You said it was intel, right, Sir? A report should be true.”

“There are doubts,” was the concession. “It’s still an early report; it needs to be verified. But they say Glauca was a man, one of many taken by the Empire when they took Cavaugh. Stolen from his land, his family, everything he stood for.”

The Glaives understood this fear. The insult of not only seeking refuge, sanctuary, in a foreign city; but being ripped away, bound by conquerors or slaughtered. 

And the Nifs were known for their experiments. 

Information bled from Gralea in trickles. In an open wound cut by years of war, poked and prodded by the seekers and spies loyal to Lucis. They had all heard the rumours of the labs secreted away in mountain bases. Of the experiments built and housed in the frozen wastes and barren tundra. 

“Glauca was hollowed out by the Nifs,” Drautos said. “Taken and changed in those labs. There were others there— other experiments. All failed.”

“Failed, Sir?”

Now even Crowe was listening, curious. The daemons prowled the edge of the barrier made by the Crown City built lights, inching closer here and there, before moving on to better hunting grounds. 

“Too weak, too broken,” Drautos didn’t need to elaborate. Failures of the Imperial experiments had been revealed before. Bases taken, captives freed, Nyx remembered the hollowed looks in gaunt faces, the broken quiet that unnerved the rescuers. “Too rebellious.”

There was a moment while food was pulled from the fire, while distant gunshots resonated in the night, while the world flashed red as an airship lifted off and they held their breaths to see if the call to action would come. The silence resettled over them, the unease creeping on the too-close scurrying of daemons and the dread left in the wake of the red flare. Nyx found himself turning to the city instead, watching the shimmering, shining barrier of the Wall like it was a beacon. 

He wondered what Noctis would do if he was captured. If he was taken and broken in a Nif lab. Hollowed our as Drautos said Glauca was. 

He smiled as he picked at the now crisp and dry meat. Noctis would tear apart the world, he knew. Just as he knew not even the Astrals could save a Nif that lay a hand on Noctis. 

He supposed that no one has tried to rescue Glauca. 

“They say the armour was forced on him. Built into him. Infused with the daemon experiments until it was part of his skin.”

They had all seen the pictures. They had all heard the theories. That sleek dark armour that seemed to fuse itself, rebuild itself. Kept the wearer masked. 

The daemonic nature of it seemed hard to deny. 

“I suspect,” Drautos shifted, stretched, straightened; “that he went insane. No man like that could swear fealty to the Emperor.”

It was almost an admission, Nyx thought. As if the Captain had considered the same sort of situation. “You think?”

“Would you, Ulric? Neither side in this damned war cares about the lands caught in the middle of it,” it was the closest any of them had heard Drautos speak his mind about the war. The opinion wasn’t secret, or even rare— it was shared between each of them here, though Nyx held out hope the King understood what was out there for them. But Drautos had always been a good soldier. He had been dutiful and silent. His voice stifled by the rank and honours pinned to his dress uniform. “No, no man from Cavaugh would degrade his home like that.”

“So,” Pelna prodded the fire, sending a shower of sparks and embers into the air as the wood snapped under the attention; “Glauca isn’t a man. Probably nothing more than a glorified MT.”

“Yeah,” Libertus agreed; “which means it goes down like one. Just gotta find the weak spot.”

Nyx hesitated, held back from the idea of the greater General the Nifs has ever thrown at them was little more than a shell stuffed with daemon ichor and wires. Something like regret crossed Drautos’ face in the night, but he assumed it was a trick of the light and fire. 

“Maybe,” another concession from Drautos. “Or maybe not. Maybe he was a Glaive once, captured, broken. Filled with all the Scourge the Empire could come up with.”

Somewhere distant, across the chasm, shouts and gunfire joined the sounds of crackling wood.

Nyx felt cold despite his heavy armour. Despite the fire. 

“Maybe,” Drautos’ eyes moved you the shadows of the daemons stalking the night. To the ronin prodding at the circle of light around them. “Maybe he’s just a deadman. Dragged back from a real peace.”


End file.
